housewife, Calvinist, libertarian and theonomist discussing what is interesting and important to me

Monday, December 17, 2012

Longish Quote from C. S. Lewis

If what you want is an argument against Christianity (and I well remember how eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true) you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say, 'So there's your boasted new man! Give me the old kind.' But if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people's souls -- of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?

Mere Christianity, Bk IV, ch. 11

He makes a great point concerning the futility of arguing against God by using the poor examples of individual Christians. He misses it, of course, when he claims that ones fate is placed within ones own hands, as it would be as nonsensical for God to leave election within the control of humans as it would have been for Him to have left the job of creation with man. More nonsensical, even, as our election is vastly more important than the molecules that make up our universe. God doesn't even leave us to choose what type of weather we shall enjoy today, He knows we could never choose Him apart from His election of us.

Reason will never lead us to Christ, although it may convince us that we have, in fact, been apprehended of Him.